Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Pick of the Week: The Beauty #3

The Beauty #3

Confession time: I am so bad to start blogging and then quit. I think I got an intro post up on this one and then haven't been back since...I'm going to try to do better with at least a weekly post about what I am excited about in the world of New Comic Book Day.

Image has been doing something extremely smart from a marketing point of view by placing around five or six pages from their upcoming comics in the back of their current comics. This move has me picking up several comics that I otherwise wouldn't have. The first of those was The Beauty. The Beauty has a bit of a strange premise in that people are catching a sexually transmitted disease that makes them absolutely gorgeous. It's a STD that people are actively trying to be infected. The downsides of the disease seem mostly unknown until it appears some of those infected are internally combusting.

In The Beauty #3, the lead detectives of our story, Foster and Vaughn, who both happen to be infected with the Beauty, are dealing with the fallout from not following the party line about the Beauty deaths. That fallout includes gunfire in a parking garage and an introduction to the Anti-Beauty movement. That movement also brings in a very concerning issue that has been playing out in current events: do pharmaceutical companies exist to make us healthier or to make a profit. As a reader I couldn't help but think of the astronomical price raise of AIDS drugs that has been in the news. The other wrinkle in the Beauty is how do you cure people that don't wish to be treated to avoid a return to their less beautiful selves.

The Beauty is written by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley, drawn by Jeremy Haun and colored by John Rauch with lettering and design by Fonografiks.